“It was getting impossible to keep up,” said Margaret Leuwen, secondary marketing manager at Flaherty Funding. “Manually pricing a single loan can take thirty to forty minutes, creating a bottleneck in our production. We knew that if we were going to grow, we needed to improve our efficiency on the front end of the process.”

Flaherty’s business development manager Ken Polowitz analyzed their operations and determined that an automated solution for underwriting and loan pricing could be the answer to their productivity problems. So he began vigorously researching potential vendors, and PriceMyLoan quickly rose to the top of his list.

SOLUTION
Ken was extremely impressed with the amount of leeway he was given while evaluating PriceMyLoan. He was provided with a Private Testing Suite, a production version of the PriceMyLoan system that was customized with the investor products that he was interested in.

“The Private Testing Suite was key because we needed to be sure we were making the right choice,” said Polowitz. “Our entire staff was able to poke and prod the system without anyone hovering over our shoulders. We were able to delve deeper into the system than any other vendor would allow.”

During their evaluation in the Private Testing Suite, one feature stood out that made their decision an obvious one: PriceMyLoan’s ability to extract live credit report data. This capability alone provides a framework for in-depth underwriting guideline and pricing validation that is unmatched by other lending automation systems. PriceMyLoan is integrated with every credit reporting agency in the country, eliminating any barriers to accessing credit report data.

“We’ve been hammering this message for years now,” said Gigi Campbell, national sales director for PriceMyLoan. “Comprehensive analysis of live credit data is the basis for an accurate underwriting and pricing decision.”

Campbell noted that, “We know that other systems are beginning to build connections to credit vendors, but the real question is what do they do with that credit data? Can they differentiate between a rolling and non-rolling late? How do they parse public record information? And how do they manage the varying data formats that are provided by different credit vendors? Our unique history in credit reporting gives us the knowledge and experience in handling credit data that very few companies understand.”

For Flaherty Funding, PriceMyLoan’s ability to pull in a live credit report was clearly a deciding factor. “The credit report holds so much data,” concluded Leuwen. “If your system is not reading it, then what good is the pricing?”

RESULTS
“We’ve already seen how it can make a big difference,” said Leuwen.“In one instance, PriceMyLoan prevented a loan from reaching our pipeline where our investor’s engine would have approved it. The difference was as small as a single thirty day late that the investor’s engine wasn’t catching. This type of mistake could have ended up costing us substantially as this was a very large multi-family property.”

And because PriceMyLoan supports multiple investors, it has given Flaherty Funding greater control over how they manage their secondary pipeline. “PriceMyLoan gives me a really quick snap shot to know where my investors are,” Leuwen explained. “It allows us to get the best pricing out to our loan officers. Where else can you get pricing from so many investors within minutes?”

Ultimately, PriceMyLoan decreased the amount of time spent on pricing by at least 50 percent, successfully resolving Flaherty’s pricing bottleneck issues. Flaherty is confident that they can now handle more volume without having to add more staff.

“Business is swamped right now, and we have no problems keeping up,” said Leuwen. There’s no other way to look at it. PriceMyLoan makes our job easier.”